When done well on older disks, defragmenting can significantly increase the speed of file loading. In addition, a good defragmenter may also try to optimize things even more, for example by placing all applications "close" to the operating system on the disk to minimize movement when an application loads. The idea behind the disk defragmenter is to move all the files around so that every file is stored on sequential sectors on sequential rings of the disk. Now when the computer tries to load the scattered pieces, the disk's arm has to move all over the surface and it takes forever. When you load a new application or a large file onto the disk, it ends up being stored in hundreds or thousands of these scattered pockets of space. These files that you delete are scattered all over the surface of the disk. This is an efficient way to place data on a hard disk.Īs you use a disk, however, this efficient technique becomes harder for a disk. Because the disk is empty, the computer can store the files of the application into sequential sectors on sequential rings. So let's imagine that you install a new application onto an empty hard disk. Compared to the speed of the processor and its memory, the time it takes for the arm to move and for a sector to spin into place is an eon.īecause of fact #3, you want to minimize arm movement as much as possible, and you want data stored in sequential segments on the disk. Hard disks are slow in computer terms. To reach a particular sector, the hard disk moves the arm to the right ring and waits for the sector to spin into position.
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